Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson
have written the best seller, The One Minute manager. This book has sold over a
million copies. It deals with the search for the best management techniques by
a young man, who finally discovers a One Minute manager. The One Minute Manager
tells him about the three secrets and more. You can read my summary of the book
here.

The three secrets revealed in the
One Minute Manager can be used in our professional life. Here is my
interpretation of the same.

One Minute Goal Setting

This is the first secret revealed in the book, The One
Minute Manager. This deals with setting clear expectations between the manager
and his team member. Often the team member is clueless of what is expected from
him. The manager does not specify what exactly a win is. The team member does
not know what good behavior in his specific context is. He does not have a
goal. So, the One minute manager recommends the following steps:

·Agree on your goals.

·See what good behavior looks like.

·Write each of your goals on a paper using less
than 250 words.

·Read and re-read each goal, which takes only a
minute to read.

·Take a minute every once in a while to look at
your performance, and

·See whether or not your behavior matches your
goal

The Goal setting helps establish a
contract. From what I have read, a written goal, as opposed to just having it
in mind, is one of the most effective ways to imprint the goal in our mind. It
enhances certain neural pathways that help us in the longer term to achieve the
goal. Then reading and re-reading the goal helps one remain focused. Often, due
to various distractions in our daily life, we loose track of our goals. This is
where reading and re-reading helps us. Now, it has to be within 250 words so
that you can read it faster. Had it been a 2500 words goal, one will not be
willing to read it at all! Then it helps to check if our actions and behavior
are leading us towards the written goals or not.

This is all about 1 minute goal.
The idea is not to set goals in 1 minute. But that the goals can be reviewed in
1 minute. Also, one can use the Pareto principle for goal setting. Since 20% of
our actions produce 80% of results, the goals should be focused on those 20% of
actions only.

One Minute Praises

The second secret of the One Minute
manager is the One Minute Praise. This is based on the belief that everyone is
a potential winner. The manager should help them reach their full potential.
This can be done by catching the team members early doing something right.
Below are the steps that can be taken for the same.

·Tell people from the beginning that you are
going to give feedback to them.

·Praise them as soon as they do something right.

·Tell them exactly what they did right.

·Tell them how good you feel about what they did
right and how it helps everyone

·Stop for a moment of silence to let the good
feelingsink in.

·Encourage them to do more of the same behavior.

·Shake hands or touch people in a way that makes
it clear that you support their success

Please note that one of the step is to have a moment of
silence, after you praise. This lets the feeling sink in. This is a
psychological technique to win people over. The other one is a light touch on
the hand or shoulder. It is incredibly effective and I have seen one of my
supervisor use this technique to win over the team members. But if you are
going to use it, be sure that you are authentic and it should not be construed
as acting.

Praising someone reinforces the right behavior. This is the
method that Pavlov used on his dog in his famous experiment. This is the
technique used by parents to encourage their child to walk or learn new words.
We do it instinctively in social and family setup. But how this technique is to
be used in a professional setup is something many are not aware of. If used
correctly, this technique will reap rich dividends in terms of developing your
team.

One Minute Reprimand

The third secret is One Minute
Reprimand. This is needed in order to rectify incorrect or improper behavior.
There are 2 parts to it. As soon as you catch someone doing something wrong,
you have to give the feedback on the behavior. That is the first part. After
that, you should also support the person so that he understands that the
behavior is undesired, but not the
person. The basic steps are listed below.

·

Set the expectation with your people that you
are going to give them direct feedback

The first part –
Reprimand:

·Reprimand people immediately when they do a
mistake.

·Tell them specifically what they did wrong.

·Tell them how you feel about what they did
wrong.

·Stop for a moment of uncomfortable silence to
let the feeling sink in

The second part
– The support:

·Shake hands, or touch them in a way that lets
them know you are with them.

·Remind them how much you value them as a person.

·Reaffirm that you think well of them but not of
their performance in this situation.

·Realize that when the reprimand is over, it’s
over

Most of the time, the feedback is
not given immediately. It is given at the time of appraisal. At that time, it
is too late for the team member to change. Also, we forget that we should hate
the sin, not the sinner. Too often, it is the sinner who is punished!

These are the 3 secrets of the
One minute manager. Easy to say, easy to remember but difficult to practice!

Sunday, June 26th 2016, I went to St Mary's College at
Yousufguda. There was supposed to be a talk by Anu Vaidyanathan, India's
first Ultraman. Now, I didn't know what Ultraman means.

Anu is a triathlete. She runs, rides bike and swims.
She has finished several marathons, iron mans (2.4 mile swim, 112 miles bike
ride and 26.2 miles running). In 2009, she completed the Ultraman, which is
swimming for 10k, bile riding for 425.6k and running for 84.4k. Now, you may be
thinking that she is an adventure sports junkie.

Well, she has a graduation and post graduation in
computer science, a PhD in electrical engineering, and she has been a professor
at IIT Ropar and IIM Ahmedabad. She has her own consulting firm operating in
the patents field. Also, she is a daughter, wife and a mother!

Now, that's some list of achievements that can make any
one proud. But she is all about humility.

I had read about Anu earlier and knew about her
achievements. So, when HR Runners decided to host her talk in the occasion of
the 10 years celebrations, I registered a slot for myself.

Though I had been to St Mary's College at Yousufguda
earlier, I was and still am not familiar with the way. Google maps have become my best
friend and they guided me to the destination. There were few cars and bikes
parked outside the college compound. As I entered the gate, the security staff
told me to go to the 4th floor.

Near the lift, I met Amulu, a Toastmasters friend who
was also there for the talk. There was a small auditorium, with capacity of
around 150 people on the 4th floor. Rajesh Vetcha, founder of Hyderabad
Runners, along with Shiv Kosgi, the operations manager, were there at the door
of the auditorium, welcoming people as they walked in.

The auditorium was dimly lit. There were about 50 odd
people inside the auditorium. Some were seated and some were milling around the
stage. On the stage, there was a small table to the right with a pile of books
neatly stacked. There were 2 standees on the stage, one announcing Hyderabad
Runners 10 years celebrations and another for Anu Vaidyanathan' book, Anywhere
but home. Anu was standing there talking to anyone who wanted to, signing the
books for anyone who bought it.

After some time the talk started. Rajesh gave a welcome
speech and invited Anu to take over. Anu passed on a feedback from and a post
card with a lucky draw instructions before starting the talk. She was very calm
and composed. She spoke in a natural style, spoke very fast and had lots of
humor baked into her talk. She started with her connection with Hyderabad and
especially Rajesh. Then how there were many Telugus who were part of her life
and the contribution by them in her journey. She told about her childhood,
school days and college days at USA. She apparently used to be a chubby kid
during school. Is was the college that one of her friend introduced her to
running.

Post her engineering in the US , she started pursuing a
PhD there. Somewhere in between, she got frustrated and decided to come back to
India. She came to Bangalore and started a start up. Running was her anchor
during that time. She felt most comfortable while running.

Then one after the other, she started taking up bigger
challenges, culminating with the Ultraman in 2009. Later she got married to a
person who also supported her ambitions. Then, she became pregnant and
continued long distance walking till almost the end of her pregnancy. It was
during that time, someone asked her to write a book. The book project took
about 2-3 years to complete. Now, it was being released.

If you look at her now, it will be difficult to believe
that she was once a triathlete. She has gained weight. But there is one thing
that she said which I liked. Her overall message was to keep passionate goals
and achieve them. She said, people like to brand themselves as something. Like
you may say you are a runner. Then you become imprisoned with your own
definition of yourself. You have to prove to yourself and to others that you
are a runner. You have to beat a certain time. That is dangerous. She said,do not cubby hole yourself. Do
whatever you are passionate about. Reinvent yourself based on the time and
circumstances. You define yourself. Others definition of you doesn't define
you!!

Finally, there was a question and answer session and a
prize distribution ceremony of HR Relay Run.

Books
are like people that you meet and you know. You like some people and some
people, you dislike very much. Then there are others that you neither like nor
dislike! Then there may be one person whom you like very much, but your friend
may not like that person. Similarly, books that are important and that you like
may not be important for others. Some books speak to you directly. Some do not.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is one such book that had a huge impact
to shape my thinking and world view.

Covey’s
book, 7 Habits, is one of those books that I give credit for having had a deep
influence on me and my thought process. It provided me with a paradigm to look
at myself, to look at my relationship with others, and to look at the world in
a pair of new eyes. It gave me ideas and links to discover more. I read up
Vicktor Frankl and his works, I learnt about the stimuli, the response and
freedom of choice in between. It taught the concept of inside out change and
the concept of dependence, independence and interdependence! The 7 Habits book
gave me a completely new way of thinking. Over a period of 6–7 years of trying
to read, re-read, listen to the audio book, and incorporate his ideas in life,
I found myself improving in many ways. My relationship with myself and with
others has improved. I have become a better person. This book has done wonders
for me. Hence, it is very important in my life.

I
am a fan of Stephen Covey. I have read most of his books as well. Two other
books that I liked were First Things First and The Principle Centered
Leadership.

Between 2009 to 2011, I was
working at a client location in Bangalore, the IT hub of India. Our client was
ANZ Bank, which had its captive IT operations running out from Bangalore. I
used to stay in a village called Kagadasapura. ANZ office was at Embassy Golf
Links Business Park, a modern IT factory, about 10km away from my residence. I
used to travel to office by bus from the CV Raman nagar bus stop. This ensured
that I got a seat and it also gave me ample of time, almost 1 hour daily, to
read books.

ANZ was, and I believe still is a progressive
organization. It used to organize several events to promote different type of
awareness among its employees. In one such quality awareness drives, the
Quality team had come to our work bay and they conducted a mini quiz. They said,
anyone who could answer 3 questions would get a spot prize. I do not remember
the questions now, but I eventually won the prize. It was a Cadbury’s
Dairy Milk Chocolate and a small red book titled “The One Minute Manager”.
Being a book lover and also a chocolate chaser, I could not have asked for
anything more. So, I devoured the Diary Milk Chocolate as soon as the event was over. Then, I took a hard look at the book and read the synopsis on
the back cover. It was interesting. It talked about 3 secrets of a One Minute
Manager. This piqued my interest to glance at the contents. From the contents,
the book seemed very funny. I decided to read it cover to cover once I board
the bus, I thought to myself.

The One Minute Manager is a very
small book, about 110 pages, written by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson. A
small book, published first in 1981, you can literally breeze through it
quickly and understand the core concepts easily. Before I go to the core
concept of the One Minute Manager, let me tell you about the characters in the
book.

In this book, there are 2 main
characters – The young man & the Old man and 3 supporting characters – the
3 folks who report to the old man.

The scene opens with the
following context. A young man is searching for the most effective manager. His
search has taken him many places. He interacted with different types of
managers. Some of them were ones who got results, but the people under them
were not happy. Some were such that the people working with them were very
happy, but they did not get results. Finally, he comes to a manager of whom he
has heard a lot of good things. He thinks it will be difficult to get an
appointment. But he is surprised with the ease with which he is able to meet
him.

The Young man spends some time
the Old Man, discussing about his management style. He learns various quirks of
the old man. The old man commends him for his sincerity to learn the method of
management and also rebukes him when the young man asks the old man to repeat
something. When the young man asks him what is his management style, the old
man says he is the One Minute Manager. Our young man is not able to understand,
let alone believe what the old man said. So, the old man asks the Young man to
talk to his staff to understand his management style.

Our young man goes and meets the
staff members and each one tells him one secret. So, here are the 3 secrets of
the One Minute Manager.

One
Minute Goal Setting – Set written goals that can be read in 1 minute

One
Minute Praise – Praise people doing right thing to encourage that behavior

One
Minute reprimands – Reprimand the wrong behavior, not the person

These are 3 simple but effective
techniques that the young man learns. The young man also discovers that the
operations run by the old man was the best in the organization and the old man
was known to be a manager-maker in the organization. After learning these, the
young man comes to the one minute manager and has a long discussion with him.
He has some doubts in his mind. He asks the following questions:

Why does
One minute Goal Setting work?

Why does
One minute praise work?

Why does
One minute reprimand work?

The old man patiently explains why each of these techniques
work. He tells that these are based on psychological principles and concepts.
He gives examples from animal world as well as social real world context on how
these principles are applied. At the end, the young man is convinced of the
effectiveness of these techniques.

Finally, the old man offers a job to the young man. He
gladly takes it up and starts practicing the one minute management concepts. He
keeps sharing these concepts with others

My observations

This book gives simple, effective
and easy to remember management techniques for managers. I loved the simplicity
and the reasoning that is given in the book on why these techniques are
effective. These techniques can be easily implemented, provided you learn them
properly, practice them and get a conducive environment. Being in toastmasters,
I could relate how effective these are while providing evaluations. In fact, as
an evaluator in one of the toastmaster meeting, I had once used this technique
to provide my evaluation to the speaker.

I have few qualms with this
technique as well. The first one is, this principle is quite good for managing
team members. But, it cannot be used while working with peers or with your
supervisors. The second one is that the scenarios described in the books are
idealistic. Real world is much more complex. It has various nuances and shades
and a direct application of these techniques may not be possible.

Having said that, my verdict is
this is a good book. I would advise you to read it, re-read it,
understand it and apply it in your professional and personal life.

Live.Love.Laugh.Learn

Offerings

Follow by Mail

Proud to be an IndiBlogger

About Me

You: "Well...Sorry, I could'nt get it. Can you please tell that again?"

Me: Never mind! To cut a long name short, I am Braja. Trust that is better. I live in Hyderabad, India with my wife and daughter. I am passionate about reading, writing, running and lately toastmastering... I blog about general musings and random thoughts. I try to live my life well, with lots of love and laugh, learning small new things everyday and finally leave the world a little better.

In another avatar, I work with Capgemini. You can find my professional credentials here.